Nelson Algren - The Man with the Golden Arm

‘He got to earn a livin’ first, Sissie. He ain’t even got the clinic paid off yet.’

‘You call this livin ’?’ Sophie wanted to know, and her voice rose into such a hysterical rattle that Violet slapped her cleanly across the cheek. For one moment Sophie’s full-moon face stared out in white shock at Violet’s impudence. ‘Now my best friend turns on me,’ she mourned, ‘he made me this way ’n you stick up fer him – you got a name like a flower but you’re a devil all the same. Go on , get upstairs, the sheeny shoplifter is waitin’ to give you some hot lovin’, you’ll just have time before Stash gets home – I’ll get upstairs by myself ’r die right here in the hall.’ She was pale with sweat and leaned heavily upon the post for support. Violet waited, hands on hips, for the tantrum to pass.

But at last had turned slowly away, so sorry that Sophie, of all people, should talk like that. Violet had hardly felt the stairs beneath her feet. In the hall at the top of the flight a red light shone over the gas meter, among a dark maze of pipes, with the meter’s single hand pointing to some midnight when no cripple would be crying below with her head on the dark newel post. Some midnight when neither Sparrow nor Frankie would be near at hand nor anyone at all, of all the friends she knew. She looked down over the banister. Sophie was in the middle of the first flight and coming on strong.

Stiffly, like a woman who has overslept, holding the banister with both hands, but still coming. ‘I knew all the time you could do it, honey!’ Violet cried down and Sophie went down in a heap, her fingers clawing piteously at the rail. To hold herself there tensely, without a single cry, till Violet had hurried down and helped her all the way up.

‘Did you see me?’ Sophie asked like a child caught in mischief.

‘You were comin’ along somethin’ wonderful, Sissie,’ Violet assured her, ‘you were climbin’ as good as anybody – it shows you can do it if you just want.’

‘You saw what happened when I tried too hard, didn’t you?’

‘I shouldn’t ought to of hollered,’ Violet realized too late. ‘I’m sorry about slappin’ you, Sissie, it was just to keep you on the ground.’ She waited for Sophie to say she was sorry too.

‘Am I gettin’ awful fat, Vi? Is that why he won’t help me upstairs no more? I just couldn’t stand his not lovin’ me like he used.’

‘Stop whimperin’,’ Violet scolded her, ‘of course he loves you like he used. He wouldn’t be takin’ care of you so good if he didn’t.’ Which was true enough, Violet knew: he loved her as little as ever and took just as small care of her as before.

When he did help her up the stairs she needed his arm to lean on across the floor and, once in the chair, needed to be wheeled and, being wheeled, needed to be comforted. Till there was no end, no end to her asking at all.

When he refused to wheel her it was as if a priest had suddenly refused to confess her. ‘Tell me what I done to you , you can’t even wheel me a little. You think I want to be laid up in a chair all my life? You remember me ever askin’ you, “Please smash me up?”’

Frankie would give in to her as he always gave in. As he gave in to Schwiefka in arguments over the take. As he gave in to Louie in arguments over the price of ‘God’s medicine.’ As he gave in to Zygmunt and Antek and Schwabatski. ‘There’s just one guy I don’t give in to in this world,’ Frankie considered, ‘the punk got to take what the others hand to me.’

And would hear an echo of Sparrow’s protest: ‘It’s just since you come back you’re givin’ me gas, Frankie. You never used to give me gas before.’

‘It’s what I got you around for,’ Frankie would remind him brutally. Thus even Sparrow had to feel the edge of those fragments of jealousy into which Sophie’s love, like her crockery, had been shattered.

Long, ugly fragments for Frankie and slenderer, more delicate ones for Violet and Violet’s iron health. ‘If I go downtown ’n see somethin’ I like I’ll buy for you too,’ Violet would try to assuage her.

‘You don’t have to buy me nuttin’,’ Sophie would scorn everyone. ‘Just buy that Frankie a set of drums. He’s gettin’ a job wit’ a big-name band one of these days – he ain’t said which day. Just don’t hold yer breath till then, that’s my advice to all you Division Street hustlers.’

For those nearest our hearts are the ones most likely to tread upon them. What she could not gain through love she sought to possess by mockery. He was too dear to her: into everything he did she must read some secret hatred of herself.

‘Whyn’t you come right out ’n say you wisht I’d got killed ’stead of crippled?’ she accused him without warning.

‘I didn’t say nothin’ like that , Zosh,’ he threshed about trying to clear himself. ‘All I said was I wish you’d just try to walk again.’

Yet she had planted the doubt in his mind. ‘Of course I don’t wish nothin’ like that ,’ he would have to tell himself. With the pang of guilt in the very words.

Violet helped him. ‘I don’t think you want to get well,’ she told Sophie. Then would wait for Sophie to stop whimpering so she could make it all up to her for saying that by wheeling her down the street to the Pulaski, chain the chair in the lobby, help her into a seat and call for her when the double feature was done.

‘I could die listenin’ to that Dick Haymes,’ Sophie would say while being wheeled home.

On days when the bill remained unchanged Violet would pop her hennaed head in the door and ask, ‘Zosh, you want to play checkerds?’

And all the while they were playing would keep up a stream of idle reminiscence calculated to keep Sophie’s mind off Frankie and all the trouble he’d brought her just like her father had warned her.

‘I’ve had trouble with my eyes lately,’ Vi would hint till Sophie would ask why she didn’t get glasses.

‘It’s not that kind of trouble. It’s from flirtin’, that kind of trouble. Me ’n my bedroom eyes.’

That was Violet’s idea of high humor and Sophie’s idea of nothing at all. ‘You ought to cut all that out, it just ain’t right,’ Sophie would scold her, ‘bein’ hooked to old Stash ’n flirtin’ around with Sparrow.’

It was true. Violet let the punk make hurried love to her on rainy afternoons – then rushed him out into the rain in time to have dinner on the stove by the time old Stash returned from work. When Stash wanted to know where she’d been all afternoon it was always ‘takin’ Zosh to the movies, Old Man.’

Only once had Old Husband taken the trouble to check with Sophie, and Sophie had been loyal enough to reply, ‘Vi was settin’ by me all afternoon by the Pulaski, we set t’rough two stinky shows. One was white gorillas ’n the other was Carmen Bolero – he had two orchesters ’n did they make glad. ’

A girl like Violet, a warm one like that, to marry an old icicle like Stash Koskozka, whose need for her stopped when she’d finished warming up yesterday’s pierogi .

‘Still, if I’d hooked up with anyone but Old Man,’ Violet tried consoling herself, ‘I wouldn’t never have had the time to keep the punk out of jail. He couldn’t stay out of jail a week without me. With me watchin’ over him sometimes he stays out a whole month. Once he wasn’t in for six, I was certainly proud of him that time. Then he went ’n spoiled it all, gettin’ picked up twice the very next week – nothin’ serious of course. I keep him out of serious trouble.’

Stash’s curiosity seldom went beyond a vague wonder that she could consume so much Polish sausage; no matter how much of the stuff he hauled home there was usually no more than a single dry butt end around when he went to the icebox.